Thursday, 31 October 2013

Halloween Visitors to the Oval Office. Caroline Kennedy, President
Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Jr. , in the White House Oval Office: photo by Cecil Stoughton, Office of the Naval Aide to the
President, 31 October 1963 (John F. Kennedy Library / US National Archives)

Letter
from Paul Morton, City Manager of Trenton, New Jersey, to the Federal
Communications Commission, 31 October 1938 (US National Archives)

Letter
from J. V. Yaukey of Aberdeen, South Dakota, to the Federal
Communications Commission, 1 November 1938 (US National Archives)

5 comments:

My earliest experience of War Of The Worlds was when I read the Classics Illustrated Comics version of it when I was a child. The story and the images terrified me and I guess I'm still terrified. I remember my father telling me about hearing it when he was a child. He said that his parents bundled him and his sister into the car to escape. Trenton wasn't that far away from where they lived. A couple of days ago I heard a wonderful, gripping Orson Welles radio performance of The Hitchhiker on the old Suspense series. In the "afterword," prior to a really masterful war bonds pitch contrasting the bonds you would be purchasing with those you would live under if Hitler won the war), Welles alluded to the War of the Worlds broadcast. I mentioned earlier that the giant windmills I saw in Massachusetts earlier this month seemed to be modeled on the War of the Worlds illustrations I saw so long ago. I cannot imagine why anyone would adopt that design and scale for any kind of machine in such proximity to people. They were ghastly. Funny to see the Kennedy children in that charming photo, including our new ambassador to Japan. I wish I could retain the pleasant memories and associations only and, as they say, hold back the night. Curtis

A certain pall is cast over the maritime paraphernalia in the Oval Office when one pauses to consider that the happy Dad in the photo had at that moment barely three weeks to live.

We've had so many Wars of the Worlds over the years, but I don't think the gullibility of those who believed the Welles broadcast to be "real" can have been any greater than that of those who believed there was a WMD under every stone in Iraq.

I agree that the Classic Comics versions of everything were more mysterious and compelling than the movie versions, because they left more to the imagination.

Still, sticking to the movies, I don't think the later remake of W of the W, for all its colossal erector-set special effects, was ever going to be a patch on the 1953 Hollywood "original".

Who will ever be able to forget one's silent questionings re the origins and agenda of those slinky Martian invaders -- or, of course, their effects on the youthful dream-life (back then, it seems one actually slept -- and dreamt!).